No body, no crime: the female body as crime scene : a critical-creative examination of representations of the female body in Northern Irish crime fiction

In centralising the victim’s trauma there is an opportunity to counter or subvert representations of gendered violence and explore the notion of female victimhood in new, imaginative ways.<br><br>Contemporary Northern Irish fiction, and also scholarship of it, has been slower than Southern Irish writing to directly address matters of the female body, so this project is a timely and necessary study of the representations of the female body, particularly as it relates to working-class female characters.

I argue that in reading Northern Irish crime fiction (and Milkman) through the lens of the female body we can illuminate the intersection between gender and class, to better understand the power dynamics that subjugate women. I conclude that in examining gender and class through representations of the female body we can move towards an understanding of the complications of the power dynamics at play, while recognising that these complications can never be fully resolved when society and fictional worlds are rooted in hegemonic masculinity. <br><i><br>Thesis is embargoed until 31 December 2028</i>.<br>